Conceptual Aircraft Design

22Aircraft Systems

22.1 Overview

As mentioned in Chapter 21, conceptual aircraft design is not merely concerned with producing a geometry that is capable of meeting the performance specifications, but also involves early thinking about many issues. This chapter continues with those issues dealing with bought‐out items, hardware considerations and selection, human interfaced items, for example, flight deck instruments, that would affect aircraft weight and cost. This chapter gives a brief overview on some of the main aircraft systems that play essential roles in aircraft becoming airworthy and must be known by the designers engaged in conceptual aircraft design to generate aircraft configurations. The hardware system items require space provision that sometimes may affect external aircraft geometry adjustment and in special cases require specific structural components, for example, undercarriage housing, wing‐body belly fairings and so on.

Most academic institutions offer separate courses on aircraft systems. In some places these areas could escape attention as the undergraduate curriculum is already packed with the classical aeronautical subjects. While detailed study of these topics is beyond the scope of this book, it is important that the newly initiated must have some feel for what is meant by these topics dealt with in this chapter.

Systems design, including avionics/electrical systems, has a large impact on performance of the propulsion system as well as aircraft mass and ...